


Swing Low

by sevenfists



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Originally Posted on LiveJournal, Podfic Available
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-09-02
Updated: 2007-09-02
Packaged: 2018-10-24 09:53:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10739298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenfists/pseuds/sevenfists
Summary: What's dead should stay dead.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For girlmostlikely. Thanks to mcee for the beta.

**1\. You of all people should know that what's dead should stay dead.**

They were in Illinois that winter, chasing down a Piasa Bird. Dean woke up that first morning with a thick pressure on his chest, like something was crouching there and bearing down with its weight. He lay on his back and sucked air into his lungs, his ribs aching with the expansive effort of it.

"You can have the shower," Sam said, hunched over his laptop.

"Yeah, thanks," Dean said, and staggered into the bathroom, his skin prickling cold. He cranked on the shower knob until the water was so hot it steamed up the fiberglass stall, but the tension around chest only kept increasing, an iron band tightening with each breath he took.

At breakfast, he picked at his bacon, ate the leftover sludge of Sam's oatmeal.

"Are you feeling okay?" Sam asked, his forehead creased like a sheet.

"Yeah," Dean said. He rubbed his knuckles hand hard against his sternum. "You gonna finish your coffee?"

"No," Sam said, and pushed his mug across the table.

They went to talk to the mother of one of the children who had been carried off. She was a thin, nervous woman, with wispy blonde hair and rings that slid around on her narrow fingers. She served them tea in china cups; didn't drink hers, just held it clattering against the saucer.

"I know this must be hard for you," Sam said, his eyes all dewy and sympathetic.

Jill's hands shook harder. Her cup rattled. "Oh, I just—take it one day at a time..."

"Can you tell us what happened to Megan?" Sam asked. His voice was hushed, lilting, like he was luring a stray cat out from under a hedge.  
  
"And since Ed left—it's not easy, you know, for a single woman," Jill said, barreling ahead like Sam hadn't spoken. "All those— _men_..." She used her free hand to tug at her cardigan.

Sam leaned forward. "Mrs. Patterson, please. We need to know what happened."

"It was—we were at the park, you know, because it was such a sunny day, and Megan loved playing on the swings, and I thought—even though it was so cold, I thought it would be nice to get outside, you know, it had been raining all week..."

"Tell me what you saw," Sam said, cajoling.

"There was. I heard this _noise_ ," Jill said. "Like. Hissing. And then there was this— _thing_ , a _monster_ , and it snatched Megan up in its claws and... it happened so fast, I couldn't—"

"I know," Sam said. "It wasn't your fault."

She started crying, softly. Sam patted her knee.

Dean ate another lavender cookie.

"Yikes," Sam said, when they were walking to the car.

"She was rattled," Dean said.

"Yeah, you think?" Sam said. "No wonder the cops think she's had a psychotic break."

"What, you mean she _hasn't_?" Dean said.

Sam frowned. "She watched her only daughter get eaten by a gigantic, mythological creature, Dean."

"So what's your point," Dean said.

"Never mind," Sam said. He shoved his hands in his coat pockets and stood by the passenger side door, waiting for Dean to unlock it.

A cold wind blew through the bare branches of the trees lining the street. The clouds gathering overhead were puffy and gray, thick with waiting snow. Dean crossed to his side of the car and fumbled the key in the lock, scraping a long gash in the paint. "Fuck," he muttered.

It was January. He had one-hundred and twenty-seven days left to live.

He didn't feel any better the next morning, and the morning after that he couldn't get out of bed when he woke up, his limbs all pinned to the mattress, like a bug on a block of styrofoam. He sucked in air, his breath rattling wetly in his chest.

"Dude, we gotta go," Sam said. "The Bird's showing up today, remember?"

The words released him, somehow, and he sat up, rubbing a hand over his head. "Right. Just—gimme a minute. Fuck. Is there any coffee?"

"We'll get some on the way there," Sam said.

They parked the car along the side of the road and walked down to the river, to the low stony bank beside the muddy water. Dean sat on one of the boulders and blew into his cupped hands, chilled. "What time's this thing supposed to come?"

Sam glanced at his watch, the crossbow hooked carelessly over his elbow. "Soon."

Dean squinted up into the gray sky. Sam's face, above him, was turned aside, unreadable. The wind picked up, changed directions. Dean tucked his hands in his armpits.

The Bird, when it came, was smaller than Dean had been expecting, but it still stirred the water with the backdraft from its wings as it lowered itself on the bank. It blinked at them and swished its tail, catlike; raised one taloned foot to its mouth and licked at its iron claws.

Dean stayed on his boulder, not wanting to make any sudden movements. "What's it doing?" he muttered to Sam.

"I don't know," Sam said, behind him.

The Bird hopped a few steps along the bank, and then hopped back, staring at them, its toothed mouth opening. Dean slid one hand inside his jacket, curling around his gun.

"The fuck's it _doing_ ," Dean said, and then it reared up, tail lashing inches from his face, and he scrambled backward off the boulder, raising his gun and watching its mouth open, cavernous. He was struck by the sudden, terrifying notion that he was going to die like that, eaten by some goddamn oversized bird on a riverbank in Illinois, and Christ, he wasn't ready for it—

_Boy, you have died already_ , the Bird said, its voice startling, a low roll of thunder inside Dean's skull. Dean froze, struck dumb by the resounding echo of those words.

"Get down!" Sam shouted, and—once Dean dropped—put a single spell-laden arrow through the Bird's heart.

"You okay, man?" Sam asked, as they walked back to the car.

"Yeah," Dean said, still shaken. "I, uh. I just thought for a second that it was gonna eat me."

Sam snorted. "Dean, that was the easiest hunt we've had in months. I guess that's why it was only carrying off little kids—your fat ass was probably too heavy for it."

"Shut up, my ass is not fat," Dean said, knocking his fist between Sam's shoulderblades. "You didn't, uh. Hear anything, right?"

"Hear what?" Sam asked, distracted, fiddling with the crossbow.

"Nothing," Dean said. "Never mind."

***

The headaches came next, splitting pressure like Dean's skull was being opened with a hacksaw. They spent a weekend in Chicago so Sam could talk to one of Ramsey's contacts. Dean didn't ask what about, determined to uphold his end of the demon's bargain. Both days, he slumped on the bed with the television on mute, trying to ignore the steady throbbing behind his eyeballs, and didn't move until Sam came back in the evening.

"What's going on?" Sam asked the second evening, when Dean couldn't even bring himself to sit up all the way.

"Just a headache," Dean said.

Sam frowned. "Okay. I brought Chinese."

"I can't eat," Dean said. "I'm too weak. You'll have to feed me."

"Shut up," Sam said, rolling his eyes, and jabbed Dean in the side with a pair of chopsticks.

When they stopped for gas the next morning, a couple hours out of the city, Dean bought two bottles of Excedrin Migraine and dry-swallowed four pills, lurking around the side of the convenience store so Sam couldn't see him. He was jittery for the rest of the day, hot and queasy from the caffeine, his knee bouncing restlessly beneath the steering wheel until Sam reached over and smacked him.

A week later, in Utah, he vomited blood after dinner, hunched over the toilet with his stomach muscles quaking.

"You okay?" Sam asked, when Dean finally emerged from the bathroom.

"Yeah," Dean said. "Guess that burger didn't agree with me."

"I told you not to eat it," Sam said, his attention already directed back toward his laptop. Dean thumbed the remote until the channel clicked over to one of those celebrity gossip shows, and he fell asleep watching Jessica Simpson's cleavage jiggle.

It happened again two days later. Once was a fluke, but twice was bad news. Sam, buried in a massive book about demonology, didn't notice when Dean slunk off to the local library to do some research. What he found wasn't encouraging. Every website urged him to seek immediate medical attention, but he didn't know what the fuck he would say to a doctor—I sold my soul to a demon and now I'm dying? He'd end up in a padded room.

He kept his mouth shut. His days were numbered as it was, and he didn't want Sam to worry.

He started getting bruises next, thick purple blotches on his thighs and back, across his ribs. It hurt to breathe and to move. In the mornings, he lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling, his chest laboring and his ribs aching with every inhalation, and his head flaring with pain. It was worse than being dead.

The fucking freakiest part was that the things they hunted seemed to know what was going on. In Montana, they wasted the ghost of one Lilah Thomas. Right before Dean shot her full of rock salt, she grinned at him and said, "You've died already, you're dead."

"What was that about," Sam said, on their way back to the car.

Dean shrugged. "Beats me."

It happened again, though, and again after that: poltergeists, uncegilas, various things that went bump in the night—they all grinned at him, teeth bared, and said, "You're dead. We know you. You're like us, you're dead."

Dean was no genius, but he knew it was a bad sign when his impending goddamn doom had been broadcast to every supernatural son of a bitch in the lower 48, like some sort of fucking mystical phone tree.

In Oregon, he felt his mouth flood with saliva, and pulled the car over, skidding to a stop on the shoulder of the two-lane state highway.

"What—Dean, what's going on," Sam said.

Dean shook his head, mute, and stumbled into the dense undergrowth. His stomach cramped; he leaned over, hands braced on his knees, and vomited a thick stream of blood onto a nearby fern. The sky was overcast, a steady drizzle of rain mixing with Dean's blood and washing it down into the soil.

" _Dean_ ," Sam said behind him, voice cracking.

"I know," Dean croaked. He straightened up, wiping his mouth on the hem of his shirt. "Fuck."

"This has happened before," Sam said.

Dean sucked air through his teeth. "No," he said.

"Are you—what's going on," Sam said, and when Dean turned to face him, his hands were fisted at his sides, his face tight, mouth tighter.

"I dunno," Dean said. "Goddamn demon bitch. I've still got four months."

"She can't do this," Sam said, getting shrill. "She can't—you made a _deal_ , she can't change the terms like this—"

"Guess she can do whatever the fuck she wants," Dean said. He brushed past Sam, heading back to the car. There was a bottle of water in the back seat with his name on it. He wanted to rinse the metallic burn of blood and stomach bile out of his mouth.

Sam trailed after him, fingers catching at Dean's sleeve. "Dean, don't—don't act like this is nothing, she's going to _kill_ you, and I can't—I won't let her do this. You've got four months. You made a _deal_."

"I shoulda been dead twice over by now, and you fuckin' know it," Dean said. He shrugged. "Maybe it's better like this. Just go ahead and get it over with. When a dog's sick, you put him down, don't let him keep on—"

Sam punched him, a swift, brutal fist to the jaw.

"Ow," Dean said.

"Fuck you, Dean," Sam said fiercely. "You don't get to say that."

Dean panted, hand clapped to his jaw. He could feel the rain wetting his hair, dripping through and sliding down his face.

"I'm driving," Sam said.

Dean slept, head jostling against the passenger side window, and when he woke up they were in the parking lot of a hospital, and Sam was trying to haul him out of the car.

"No," he said, shoving an elbow at Sam. "No goddamn hospitals."

"Come on," Sam said, and pressed his lips together. "Don't make me carry you."

"Shit," Dean said. Sam probably wasn't kidding. He got out of the car and felt his head reel, his vision darkening as his blood pressure dropped. " _Shit_ ," he said again.

Sam grabbed his elbow, steadying. "Okay, and this is why we're at the hospital."

Dean scowled and jerked his arm away. "Christ, Sammy, what is this, some kind of damn intervention? You're doing it 'cause you love me?"

He was trying to be an asshole, but Sam just looked at him, all sad and big-eyed, and said, " _Yes_."

Whatever Sam said to the nurse at the check-in desk got them whisked into a curtained-off examination room within ten minutes. Dean stripped down to his boxers and let the doctor stick needles in him for a while. The floor had a crack in it that almost looked like somebody's face. Sam was restless, jogging his knees when he sat in the chair beside the examining table, getting up periodically to pace up and down the hallway outside.

"I'll need about half an hour to run the bloodwork," the doctor told Dean. "Do you need anything while you wait?"

"No," Dean said, "I'm good."

Sam came back with coffee, the tiny cup dwarfed in his hand.

"You didn't bring me any?" Dean asked.

"You might have an ulcer," Sam said. "Or. Epilepsy. I don't know."

"I don't have epilepsy," Dean said.

Sam sat down in the chair. "You're. Dean, why didn't you tell me."

Dean shrugged, picked at a hangnail. "Not like _you_ tell _me_ everything."

"I'd tell you about something like this," Sam said.

"Whatever," Dean said. The vent in the ceiling clanked on. His arms prickled with sudden goosebumps. He and Sam sat there in silence, waiting for the doctor.

The bloodwork came back clean, and so did the MRI. "Healthy as a horse," the doctor said, "although you might want to avoid any further concussions. But with the symptoms you've reported, we'd like to keep you overnight for observation—"

"Thanks for all the help, Doctor, uh, Chen," Dean said, glancing at her name tag, "but I'm feelin' great, guess we better leave—"

"Wait," Sam said. "Are you—do you think that would help?"

The doctor shrugged, flipped through her folder. "Can't hurt. Honestly, I can't find a thing wrong with him, but I'm assuming you wouldn't be so panicked if he had a known history of hypochondria."

"Hypo—I'm not makin' this crap up!" Dean said.

"I saw him vomit blood," Sam said. "There's something wrong with him."

"I'm not denying that; we just can't find any quantifiable evidence of it," the doctor said dryly. "Hence the need for further observation."

Sam sat back in his chair, hands splayed over his kneecaps. "Okay. Overnight."

"What, I don't get a say in this?" Dean asked.

" _No_ ," Sam said.

They put him in a room with a guy with a broken leg and a fat middle-aged dude who snored like a freight train all night. Between that and the constant beeping of machines, and the way the little gown they'd put him in kept riding up, and how much he frickin' hated hospitals anyway, Dean didn't sleep much. It was a long night.

There was nothing wrong with him in the morning, either, at least not according to Dr. Chen.

"Clean bill of health," she said, writing notes. "Physically, he's in great condition. Go home. Call me if symptoms recur."

"That's it?" Sam said. He was wearing the same clothes he'd been wearing the day before, and his jaw was lined with stubble. "You can't—isn't there something else you can do?"

The doctor shrugged. "Sure, we can keep him here indefinitely, if you feel like running up a huge hospital bill and possibly preventing other patients from getting the treatment they need."

Sam rubbed his forehead. "He was so _sick_."

"And he's not now," Dr. Chen said. "Go home." Her expression wasn't unkind.

Sam drove them back to the motel in silence, one hand on the steering wheel and the other tucked beneath his thigh on the seat. Dean stared out the window at the overcast sky, the slow mist of rain so typical of the Northwest.

Sam parked right in front of their room and turned off the engine, but he didn't make any move to get out of the car, and Dean didn't, either. He picked at the growing hole in his jeans, pulling soft fibers out of the tight weave.

"Whatever it takes," Sam said. "I'm getting you out of this."

Dean looked over at him. Sam's chin was jutting out, the stubborn set he'd had since childhood: Sam on a mission.

"Whatever it takes," Sam said again.

 

 

**2\. How certain are you that what you brought back is 100% pure Sam?**

The first time Dean should have died was in Nebraska. He dreamed about it for months afterward: the panic in Sam's eyes, the weak flutter of his own heart, Le Grange's hands on his face, and the long, gasping rise to the surface, like the afterlife was a lightless ocean and everything else was the attempt to stay afloat.

The second time, waking up in a hospital bed with a tube down his throat, he was afraid.

Dean had never wasted too much time having deep thoughts, but he knew when something was unnatural, and for him to get up after that, walk out of the room, be healed—it unsettled the fuck out of him. His life didn't belong to him anymore, begged, borrowed, and stolen, and he was pretty sure his cosmic bank account was in overdraft.

Making the deal with the crossroads demon was almost a relief, after that. It restored the natural balance of things. Every day of his life since Nebraska had been a double-edged sword, time he relished but didn't deserve, and he gladly traded it in for the full length of Sam's life. He knew the terms to that bargain, what was coming, and when. And how much time he had left.

Things were great the first few months after they killed that yellow-eyed son of a bitch—the best months of Dean's life, him and Sam on the road together, everything sunlit and wide-open, the highways stretching endless before them. For a while, they were killing demons in almost every town they passed through, bang-bang-bang like dominoes toppling over; and that was part of Dean's elation, the thrill of sending those suckers back where they belonged, but there was more to it than that. He didn't have to worry about his goddamn place in the universe anymore. He knew what was happening; things were as they should be, Sam was in one piece, and Dean didn't so much mind that he only had a year left when he'd been living on borrowed time anyway.

In August, they spent an afternoon on a beach in South Carolina, Dean checking out bikini-clad co-eds while Sam splashed happily in the breakers; and it was the best day he could remember having in years, since before Dad died, before Cassie, before Sam left for Stanford.

It couldn't last. Winter set in early that year, cold and brutal as far south as the Mason-Dixon line, deep snow in places that hadn't seen more than a couple inches in decades. And then Dean got sick, and Sam found out, and they'd spent the last eight months mostly ignoring the fact that Dean was going to be dead within a year, but it was hard to keep pretending when he was puking blood at every opportunity.

"I'm gonna die," he said to himself the morning after he got out of the hospital, facing his reflection in the mirror above the sink. His face looked the same as it always had. Maybe a little paler. He felt tired in that bone-deep way, wanted to get back in bed and sleep straight through until the next day.

Sam was dressed already by the time Dean got out of the bathroom, sitting on the bed with his duffel on the floor at his feet. "We're going," Sam said.

"Uh, what? Going where?" Dean asked.

"Somewhere—I don't know, Ana Maria's, or. I don't know. We've got to—" Sam dropped his head into his hands, pushing his hair back off his forehead.

"Yeah, so what are we gonna do, smart guy," Dean said. "You gonna pull some miracle outta your ass and save me? Is that the plan?"

"Pretty much," Sam said. He straightened up, sighed. "Change your clothes. You smell like a hospital."

"Everybody's a critic," Dean muttered.

They were on the road all day. Dean slept through most of it, waking up for lunch and for an hour or two in the late afternoon, heading through northern California.

"We could drive on through," Sam said, when they stopped for dinner outside Bakersfield. "Be in San Diego by a little after midnight."

"There is no frickin' way I'm gonna let you drive at night," Dean said. "I know how you get. You'll fall asleep and run my baby into a tree."

Sam rolled his eyes. "That was _one time_."

"Once is all it takes," Dean said. "We're finding a motel."

He fell asleep listening to the low murmur of the 11:00 news, and woke in the dark, a nightmare receding from his mind like water rushing away from the beach. He was clammy with sweat, nauseated, his pulse racing. Sam was motionless in the other bed, and for a terrible moment, still halfway trapped in his dream, Dean was convinced that Sam was dead.

But Sam moved, then, muttering in his sleep, and Dean rolled onto his side and vomited a thick pool of clotted blood onto the carpet.

" _Shit_ ," he muttered, his mouth copper-slick.

"Dean?" Sam croaked, and Dean fisted his hands in the sheets, defeated.

"I'm fine," he said. "Go back to sleep, Sammy."

"Are you—what—I thought I heard something," Sam said, and then he was sitting up and turning on the light, and there was nothing Dean could do at that point but lie there and take it.

"It's nothing," he said, last-ditch.

"Jesus Christ," Sam said, coming around the end of the bed. It did look pretty fucking' horrible, dark blood stain spreading across the thin carpet. "You didn't—Christ, Dean, you didn't tell me it was this bad."

"Yeah, 'cause I don't want you fussin' over me," Dean said. He wiped his mouth with a corner of the sheet—the room was already wrecked, he might as well go all out. "It's not even that bad."

"That's at least a pint," Sam said. "How often has this been happening? Dean? If you're losing a pint every time you throw up—"

"Hasn't killed me yet," Dean said. "I'm like the goddamn Energizer bunny."

"This isn't funny," Sam said, all pale and worried-looking, his mouth tight.

"Fine," Dean said, "fine, whatever, it isn't funny, but you could at least let me have some goddamn gallows humor, Sammy, it's not like I've got anything else going for me—"

"Stop it," Sam said. He went into the bathroom and came back out with a towel. Dean watched as he got to his knees on the carpet and started mopping ineffectually at the blood stain. "I'm not letting you die. You can't die, you can't leave me here—you can't—"

"Hey," Dean said, frowning. He sat up, swung his legs over the side of the bed. Sam was hunched over, his face hidden by his hair. "I've still got some time, dude, you don't have to freak out."

"I'm twenty-four," Sam said, "and my mother's dead, and my father, and the woman I thought I was going to marry, and I can't let you die too, Dean, I can't, I won't let it happen, you're all that I have left, you're—you—" He broke off, still scrubbing at the carpet, and made a harsh, terrible noise, like something a crow would make. After a moment, Dean realized that Sam was crying.

"Hey," Dean said, "Sammy, hey." He reached down and touched Sam's hair, tangled with sleep. "It's not that bad."

Sam didn't say anything. Dean slid his fingers through Sam's hair, thumbed the cool rim of his ear. The air conditioner kicked on. They sat like that until the sun came up, and then they got in the car and drove south.

***

Ana Maria took one look at Dean and tried to shut the door in their faces, but Sam pushed his shoulders through. "Listen to me," Sam said, "Ana Maria, come on—"

"Don't you bring that in my house," Ana Maria said, pointing a finger at Dean. "That doesn't come in here."

"Jesus Christ," Dean muttered. "Forget it, Sam, we'll go see Karl or Ramsey or somebody."

"No," Sam said. "Ana Maria, _please_ , he did it for me. Look at him."

Ana Maria narrowed her eyes, playing with the shells woven into her dreadlocks. "Fine," she snapped. "But don't you touch anything."

"Thanks," Dean said sarcastically, and stepped over the threshold.

Ana Maria made rooibos tea for them. Dean only knew what it was called because he looked at the box. They sat around Ana Maria's rickety kitchen table while she hummed into her mug and sloshed the liquid around. Dean looked at the weird artwork on the walls, collages made of newspaper clippings, dried plants, and dark smudges of paint. He liked Ana Maria, and he sure as shit respected her, but the woman was _strange_.

"He's not really sick," Ana Maria said after a while.

"That what I've been sayin'," Dean said.

"You be quiet," Ana Maria said. She leaned toward Sam, holding out her mug. "Samuel, look. Do you see this pattern of the leaves? He won't die before it's time. She's just trying to weaken him. Make you scared."

Sam glanced at Dean, his face unreadable. "Are you sure?"

Ana Maria scoffed. "Don't ask stupid questions, Winchester."

"He keeps—he's been vomiting blood," Sam said.

"Magic," Ana Maria said, shrugging. She scratched at the bridge of her nose, where her sunburn was peeling. "You know demons do what they want. Blood is like water to them, it means nothing, it's easy to find."

"Okay," Sam said. He was too big for the furniture, and he looked ridiculous, hunched over the table with his mug in one hand. "But do we—can we save him?"

"Maybe," Ana Maria said. "Old magic, maybe. You know I won't touch that."

"Nothing before Jesus," Sam said dryly.

Ana Maria grinned. "That's right. I do what the Lord tells me. And none of your blasphemy, Dean."

Dean shifted in his seat, guilty. "Um. Could I have some more tea?"

"A bit more," Ana Maria said, lifting the kettle. "It's good for you."

Sam sighed, set his mug on the table. "So, I mean. Is there anything _after_ Jesus that could help us?"

"Maybe," Ana Maria said.

Dean drank his tea while they talked about things he was too tired to care about—herbal remedies, spirit possession, outdated exorcism rites. He put his head down on the table and studied the wood grain, weathered golden. It was warm in the kitchen, and he drifted off, lulled by the rise and fall of his brother's voice.

He woke to a hand on his shoulder—Sam's. "You awake?" Sam asked.

"Am now," Dean said. He sat up and surreptitiously wiped some drool from the corner of his mouth. "Are we, um. What time is it?"

"Time for dinner," Sam said. He smiled at Dean, his eyes creased at the corners, and Dean had to look away from him, from everything he saw in Sam's face.

They spent the night at Ana Maria's house, sharing the lumpy sofa bed, and in the morning Sam and Ana Maria left right after breakfast. Dean spent most of the day curled up in an armchair, alternately napping and reading one of Sam's spy novels. His head was throbbing, but he didn't puke at all, so he counted it as a win.

After dinner, Ana Maria pulled Dean into cluttered room that she used as her workshop, and made him sit on a stool while she looked into his eyes with a penlight.

"Ow," Dean said, wincing away from her.

"Don't be silly, it doesn't hurt," Ana Maria said. "I can see things here. Do you not want me to?"

"I don't know," Dean said. "What are you gonna see?"

"It doesn't work that way," Ana Maria said. "You can't know the answer before you ask the question."

Dean rolled his eyes. " _Fine_. Jesus, you and your mystical bullshit. You're such a goddamn hippie."

"Your father was the same way," Ana Maria said. "Always skeptical. Tilt your head back."

Dean's eyes watered but he kept them open, staring into the light. Ana Maria hummed over him and tilted his head this way and that, her free hand on his jaw.

"Well," she said finally, clicking off the penlight. "You watch out for that brother of yours, Dean. Keep your eyes on him. And remember that dying isn't the worst thing that can happen to you."

"What's worse than spending all eternity in Hell," Dean said.

Ana Maria shrugged. Her freckles were pronounced in the low light. "It depends on your definition," she said. "You think about it."

"And why do I need to watch out for Sam," Dean said, a sudden prickle going up his spine.

Ana Maria didn't answer.

That night, he and Sam lay awake for hours, both of them on their backs on the cheap mattress, pretending that they were asleep. Dean watched stripes of moonlight slowly move across the ceiling. He even tried counting frickin' sheep, but nothing worked; he'd slept too much during the day, probably.

"Sam," he said finally, giving up the pretense. "What'd you and Ana Maria do today?"

Sam rolled onto his side, facing Dean. He looked younger in the dim light, more like the brother Dean remembered from before Stanford. "We went to see one of her friends," Sam said. "Apparently he's some sort of expert on demons."

"What'd he say?" Dean asked.

"That I shouldn't invalidate your sacrifice by being an idiot. Which I guess means there are ways to save you, but he didn't want to tell me what they are. I'll figure it out, though," Sam said, and he said it like it was a given, the most simple thing in the world.

"Ana Maria told me to keep an eye on you," Dean said. "She said there are worse things than Hell."

"There probably are," Sam said. "But I won't give you up."

"Maybe it's not your decision," Dean said.

"It is," Sam said. "I'll make it my decision. Nobody gets to take you from me."

Dean looked away, his belly churning. He didn't like how calm Sam's voice was, or the quiet way Sam was looking at him. "Shouldn't mess with the natural order of things. That's how we got into this mess in the first place."

"I don't care," Sam said.

Dean slung an arm over his face. "Whatever. Just—whatever, Sam."

Sam reached out and touched Dean's hip, his fingers sliding up underneath the hem of Dean's t-shirt, callused and warm.

"Stop it," Dean said, rolling away.

"You're all I have," Sam said.

"Yeah, I got that," Dean said. "Go to sleep."

They left in the morning, headed north. When Sam held out his hand, silently demanding, Dean handed over the keys without a fight, and he slept in the back seat until Las Vegas, the upholstery sticking to his face. Sam kept cranking the heater up, and Dean felt warm for the first time in weeks. He didn't dream.

He woke gasping, pinned where he was.

"Dean," Sam said, leaning halfway over the front seat, "Dean, _Dean_."

Dean lifted one hand. "I'm awake."

"Okay," Sam said. He sucked in air through his teeth. "We're, um. I've stopped for lunch."

Dean wasn't hungry. "I want a milkshake," he said.

"Okay," Sam said.

They made it to Thompson by the end of the day, and to Mission the day after that. Dean drove for a grand total of one hour, shaking and light-headed the entire time, and after he almost rear-ended a semi, Sam exiled him to the passenger seat.

The third day, they pulled into the long driveway leading up to Bobby's house.

As soon as Sam got out of the car, Bobby's new dog, Princess, bolted out from under a tree, snarling, and then wagging her tail once she realized who it was. Dean stayed in the car, slumped in the back seat. Bobby's truck wasn't in the drive, and Dean already knew what they would find there: the house empty, and Bobby's hunting things gone.

"Come on," Sam said, hauling open the back door of the car. "You need help?"

"No," Dean said. He got out of the car and blinked against the head rush, grasping at the metal edge of the door until it passed. "He's not here, Sam."

"I know," Sam said. "But, I mean. Maybe he just went into town or something."

"Maybe," Dean said. Bobby always took the flag down when he was going to be away longer than overnight. God only knew where he'd gone, but he sure wasn't at home.

"So what do we do now," Sam said.

"I dunno," Dean said. He headed toward the house, boots sliding against the slickly compacted snow in the yard. "Shit, even if I knew I wouldn't tell you, Sam, you know I'm not a frickin' willing participant in any of this."

"Well, maybe you should be, it's _your life_ —"

"You know the terms just as well as I do, Sammy," Dean said. He climbed the front steps and turned to look at Sam, still standing by the Impala, his hair flecked with light snow. "You want both of us to drop dead? 'Cause that is sure as hell not the idea. I'm keepin' your ass alive."

"I didn't ask you to do this," Sam yelled. "Just like you didn't ask Dad, you goddamn hypocrite—"

"That's different," Dean said. He put one hand on the porch railing and leaned his weight on it. "Dude, I'm not—do we have to do this right now?"

Sam shoved his hands in his coat pockets, hiked his shoulders up around his ears. "I guess not. No."

Sam picked the lock on the front door. It was quiet inside, and cold; Bobby had cut the heat off, and that more than anything was what finally convinced Sam that Bobby wouldn't be back anytime soon.

"He's not here," Dean said.

"Yeah, Dean, I'm aware of that," Sam said, rooting through the kitchen cupboards. Dean didn't know what he was looking for.

They spent the night there, sleeping on the rickety twin beds in the spare room. Dean slept the night through, deep and easy, lulled into it by Sam's steady breathing and the rhythmic thump of Princess's tail against the rug.

In the morning, he made a pot of coffee, drank two cups, and vomited into the toilet, thick, dark blood clots mixed with brown liquid.

"You made coffee," Sam said, happy, when he got up. "You want a refill?"

"Didn't agree with me," Dean said, sitting at the kitchen table with a week-old newspaper, one arm clenched tight across his belly. His gut was roiling steadily, and his palms were sweaty, slick with newsprint.

Sam poured the rest of the coffee down the sink.

After breakfast, Sam hunkered down in the living room with a stack of Bobby's books, and Dean went for a walk with Princess, crunching through the dried leaves in the woods behind Bobby's house. His boots left dark stamps in the snow. The world was hushed, muffled by the thick clouds overhead. His lungs couldn't expand as much as he needed them to, and he had to stop every hundred yards or so and lean against a tree, gasping for air with his head down. Princess waited for him, her ears pricked.

When he made the deal with the Crossroads Demon, his death had been an abstraction, so far in the future that he couldn't really bring himself to worry about it. A year was a long time. But he was dying now, four months too soon, and death was something that rode on his shoulder, watching him all the time. It was real.

He went back to the house once his face was numb from the cold. Sam was still buried in research. Dean drifted in and out of sleep for most of the afternoon, curled on the sofa while Sam flipped pages and Princess snored on the rug.

"There's nothing here," Sam said at breakfast the next morning.

Dean raised his eyebrows. "No way you went through all of those books already."

"The important ones," Sam said. "There's nothing. You can break a deal with a demon if it's superseded by a deal with a more powerful demon, or through blood magic—"

"No," Dean said. "Absolutely not. I am not gonna let you get tangled up in that."

Sam shrugged. "It might be—"

" _No_ ," Dean said. "Christ, Sam, are you hearing yourself? Blood magic? What the hell is wrong with you, that's just. You _don't_."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Settle down. Jesus, it was just a thought."

"Whatever," Dean said, frowning. Their first run-in with blood magic had been when Sam was thirteen, a group of backwoods necromancers sacrificing little kids, and Sam spent the next six months having screaming nightmares every day of the week and twice on Sundays. Dean had never heard him talk about it so casually, like it was something within the realm of possibility. It was unsettling. Dean frowned harder. "Promise me you won't," he said.

"Fine, I won't. Happy? Finish your orange juice."

Dean made a face. "It's got pulp."

"You need the sugar," Sam said. "I heard you throwing up last night."

"Shut up," Dean said.

"Well, you haven't died yet, at least," Sam said.

Dean stared at him over the rim of his glass.

"You heard Ana Maria," Sam said. "It's not a physical illness. Demon magic can make you pretty miserable without doing any actual harm."

"Well," Dean said. He scratched his chin, set his glass down on the table. It left a wet ring on the tablecloth. "So you're, uh. You're not worried anymore?"

"I've been doing some thinking," Sam said.

"So, what, you think she isn't gonna kill me?"

"Oh, she'll kill you," Sam said. "Just not yet. She _can't_. She's got to follow the terms of the deal, just like you do. There's been a bargain made, and she can't renege on it any more than you can."

"You're being pretty, uh. Matter-of-fact about all this," Dean said. Sam was really starting to freak him out. A week ago, the dude had been flipping out in the hospital, and now he was all calm and rational? Dean didn't trust it.

"It's easy to get caught up in hysteria," Sam said. "But I've been reading things. We've still got some time."

"Four months," Dean said.

"It's enough," Sam said.

In the morning, Sam sang in the shower. Dean couldn't make out the exact words, but Sam was loud and slightly off-key, and Dean huddled beneath his blankets and coughed until his bones rattled. He didn't know what the hell he was supposed to do.

"We're going," Sam said later, fully dressed and cheerful.

Dean looked up from crumbling his toast crusts. "Uh, what? Where are we going?"

"Into town," Sam said. "We need some groceries if we're planning to stay here for a while."

"Are we, uh. We're planning on that?" Dean asked.

"Yeah," Sam said. "Bobby's got a lot of books."

"I thought you said you went through them already," Dean said.

"I was researching the wrong things," Sam said. "Demon lore isn't going to help us."

"How the hell do you know that," Dean said, frowning.

Sam rolled his eyes. "It's not hard to put it all together, Dean. We won't be able to get you out of this if we're playing by her rules."

"Whatever," Dean said. His head hurt, and he wanted to go back to sleep. "Do I have to come with you?"

"Yes," Sam said. "We can leave as soon as I do the dishes," and Christ, that was vintage Sammy, worrying about the _dishes_ when both their lives had completely gone to hell.

***

Sam spent three days buried in research, camped out on the sofa with his laptop perched on his knees and a stack of books on the cushion beside him. Dean took Princess on a lot of walks, and napped more than he would ever feel comfortable admitting. He was bored and light-headed: a bad combination, because he couldn't do much more than shuffle around the house and Bobby's yard.

"I'm an idiot," Sam said on the fourth afternoon, closing one of Bobby's books and dropping it heavily onto the carpet. Princess yelped and scuttled under the table.

"Not news to me," Dean said. He was sprawled in one of the armchairs, watching Springer. A fat chick in spandex was pulling another woman's hair.

"We need something older than demons," Sam said.

Dean scoffed. "What's older than demons? They've been around forever, there's no gettin' rid of 'em."

"That's not true," Sam said. "The crossroads demon is basically a construct of Christianity—the whole selling your soul to the Devil thing. Whereas, you know, if you look at other religious traditions, they don't have the same ideas about sin and redemption and stuff. I mean, most cultures have some sort of concept of good versus evil, but it's really Christianity that—"

"Cut to the chase, dude," Dean said.

Sam rolled his eyes. "I'm _saying_ that we need to find something older than Christianity. If it pre-dates demons, it might be able to circumvent their, uh. The physics of them, I guess. They're evil, but they still have laws they have to obey."

"So, like what," Dean said.

"I'm working on that," Sam said.

Dean didn't like magic; never had. The closest he was willing to get was the occasional exorcism. Anything past that made him twitchy. Demons he knew, and spirits, things that were angry and wild; magic freaked him out, and old magic was worse than anything, centuries of mystical foolishness and back-woods rituals. Dean didn't like things he didn't understand.

Sam had always been the same way: respectful of hedge-witches and palm-readers, but with the same deep skepticism that came from being John Winchester's son. But now he was talking about it like it was _possible_ , like if he believed hard enough and said the right words, Dean would be reborn in a shower of fire, like a damn phoenix or something.

Sam went into town a few days later, on some mysterious errand that he didn't bother sharing with Dean, and Dean took the opportunity flip through Sam's notes. He had stuff in there about Chinese mythology, Gilgamesh, Ouroboros. Dean wasn't sure what any of it had to do with getting him out of the deal, but whatever. At least half of what Sam did had always been completely inexplicable to Dean.

"What the hell is all of this," he said to Sam, after Sam got back. "Clay feet? Guan-Yin? You really think this shit is gonna help me?"

"Something will," Sam said, stacking cans of black beans on the counter. "I'll find it."

"Yeah, that's what worries me," Dean muttered.

"I'm trying to _save_ you," Sam said. "It almost seems like you aren't grateful."

"You're just kinda freaking me out, Sammy," Dean said. "I just get the idea that—I dunno. You're not gonna do anything stupid, right? Promise me."

"It depends on your definition of stupid," Sam said.

"Shut up," Dean said. "You promise me. No blood magic, no deals, no necromancy, nothing that Dad wouldn't want you messin' around with—"

"There were plenty of things Dad didn't want me to do," Sam said, "and it's not like that ever stopped me."

"Dude," Dean said, and then couldn't think of anything else to say.

He had a flask of holy water in the Impala, tucked in one of the side pockets. He went out and got it that afternoon, while Sam was busy reading, and poured some in Sam's post-dinner beer. Sam made a face when he took the first sip, but he didn't start steaming or anything, and he drank the rest of the bottle without incident.

Not possessed, then, but Dean couldn't forget the Demon's words to him: _How sure are you...?_ He wasn't sure. It was an ugly thought.

He didn't sleep well that night. He kept dreaming the same dream over and over, the one he'd had so much the year before, after Sam got possessed: Sam's eyes glowing yellow, his grinning mouth smeared with blood.

A few days later, Bobby came back.

Dean heard the truck in the driveway, crunching gravel under snow, and then Princess went crazy, leaping at the door until Dean opened it and let her out into the yard. She bounded down the steps and pawed urgently at the door of the truck while Bobby opened it and got out, laughing and batting at her head.

"Hey, uh," Dean said, standing on the porch. "You're back."

"You're here," Bobby said dryly. He hauled a duffel bag out of his truck and walked toward the house, Princess leaping around his boots.

"Yeah, we. There's a situation," Dean said.

"This have anything to do with you selling your damn fool soul to that demon?" Bobby asked.

Dean sucked on his teeth. "Maybe. Look, Bobby, there's something you oughta know."

"What is it," Bobby said.

"About Sam," Dean said. He glanced over his shoulder, but Sam was still somewhere inside the house, hopefully out of earshot. He closed the door behind him anyway. "I think there's something wrong with him."

"Wrong how," Bobby said.

Dean shrugged. "Not sure. He's not possessed, I checked that already. But he—he's not right."

"You should've called me," Bobby said.

Dean hadn't wanted to—didn't want Bobby to see him like this, sick and scared, fucking _terrified_ of dying and of what was happening to Sam. "Yeah, well, I didn't," he said.

"Apparently not," Bobby said. "I thought you were smarter than this, Dean."

"Don't know where you got a dumb idea like that," Dean said.

Bobby shot him a sharp look. "Good thing your daddy can't hear that mouth you've got."

"I'll bet he's rolling in his grave," Dean said, suddenly furious, and he turned and went back into the house.

"What's going on," Sam said, camped on the sofa with his books.

"Bobby's back," Dean said. His boots were heavy on the floor as he walked to the rear of the house, the small bedroom he was sharing with Sam. He sat down on his bed. The rug on the floor was gray with old dirt and age. It was snowing again, lightly. His stomach hurt so bad he thought it might have ripped in two inside his belly, everything in there spilling out and poisoning him.

From the living room, he heard Sam's happy rumble, the sound of Princess barking. Everything was wrong. He didn't want to die, but more than that, he didn't want Sam to turn into something that Dean shouldn't have bargained for.

Bobby made chili for dinner. Dean picked at his food, pushing the corn over to one side of the bowl. He hated corn.

It was a quiet meal. When they were almost done eating, Bobby rapped his spoon on the edge of his bowl and said, "Well, Sam, you gonna tell me how you plan to get your brother out of this foolishness?"

"I'm still working on it," Sam said. "But I've still got some time."

"You ever consider that you might now be able to save him?" Bobby asked.

Sam smiled. "I'll save him," he said.

It was more than a little creepy, the way Sam kept insisting on that. "Sam likes to count his chickens," Dean said.

"I'm not," Sam said. "I know I'll find something. There are a lot of possibilities."

"Just because you _can_ doesn't mean you _should_ ," Bobby said. "There've been enough bargains with the Devil in your pig-headed family. Might be time to just let it go."

"No," Sam said, calm and easy as anything.

"Everybody's gotta die sometime," Bobby said, and glanced at Dean.

Dean looked down at his bowl, the corn all piled up along one side.

"He's my brother," Sam said, and Dean got up from the table to start washing the dishes.

Bobby pulled him aside later that evening, and they went out onto the porch, Dean shivering in his flannel shirt. Bobby said, "That brother of yours—"

"I know," Dean said. "Christ, yeah, I know, Bobby. You think there's anything I can do about it?"

"You Winchesters," Bobby said. "Every last one of you is touched in the head."

"It's our best trait," Dean said, and pushed a hand through his hair. "Seriously, I just can't—I don't know what to do. He's so. I dunno what to do."

"Don't let him," Bobby said. "Whatever he's thinking of, don't let him do it."

"I don't even know what it is, yet," Dean said.

"Don't let him do it," Bobby said.

"I won't," Dean said, but he was thinking of the frantic, hopeful way Sam had been reading through Bobby's books, and he wasn't sure he was telling Bobby the truth.

Bobby went back inside, and Dean stumbled down the porch steps to vomit in the snow, crisp red in the lowering night. He kicked fresh snow over it afterward, like a cat burying its own shit.

It took Sam another three days of endless research before he appeared in the doorway of their bedroom, his boots creaking on the jamb and waking Dean from his nap. Dean blinked and rubbed at his eyes. "You need something?"

"I found it," Sam said. He had a book clutched under one arm, and his eyes were wide and shining.

"Found what?" Dean asked.

"What I've been looking for," Sam said. "The Garden of the Hesperides."

Dean sat up, ran his hands over his face. "The Garden—Sam, what the hell are you talking about."

"I'm going to make us immortal," Sam said, and grinned.

For a moment, all Dean could do was stare, horrified by the joyful light in Sam's eyes.

***

Dean had never paid much attention in school, but he'd liked Greek mythology, how grandiose and absurd it was, and he still remembered the labors of Hercules and those damn golden apples. It wasn't _real_ , though; it was just a _story_ , but the way Sam was talking about it, he clearly thought it was actually going to happen.

"It's just a matter of finding the Garden," Sam explained to Bobby, pen poised over his notebook. "I've found some references in Herodotus that might help—"

Bobby had been staring at Sam for the last ten minutes, arms crossed over his chest, frowning in silence while Sam explained his crazy immortality idea. It was making Dean freakin' nervous. Bobby was practically _oozing_ disapproval, but Sam was totally oblivious, babbling on about coordinates and astral streams and God only knew what.

"Sam," Dean said, tired of Bobby's snake eyes and Sam's rambling. His back was aching, steady red-hot spikes up his spine. "This is ridiculous."

"No it's not," Sam said, blinking. "It's going to save you. Don't you—I thought you wanted that."

"I never asked you to," Dean said. "Not once, Sammy. This is all you. Fucking _golden apples_ , man, this is just. It's _crazy_. You can't do shit like this."

"I'm doing it for you," Sam said.

"Yeah, well, you shouldn't," Dean said, and pushed his chair back from the table. There was coffee on the counter, perking steadily into its pot. He poured himself a cup, hands shaking. The ceramic rattled against the countertop. He'd been shaking all the time, the last week or two, unsteady on his feet even when he was just walking across the hallway to the bathroom.

"You're a damn fool, Sam," Bobby said, the first words he'd spoken since Sam sat down at the table with his stack of notes.

"I'm not going to let him _die_ ," Sam said. "Especially not now that I know I can do something to stop it."

"You're not right," Bobby said. "You realize what you're contemplating? What you're dealing with is _forever_. It ain't right to mess around with that sort of deep magic. What happens five hundred years from now, when civilization's crumbled and it's just the two of you living in a cave somewhere, eating rats?"

"I don't care," Sam said. "At least Dean will be alive."

Dean leaned against the counter, elbows digging in, his throat coated sour with bile.

Bobby pounded his fist on the table. "Samuel! Are you listening to yourself? What's wrong with you! I know your daddy didn't raise you like this, fooling around with goddamn unnatural things like _immortality_ , for Christ's sake—"

"I don't care," Sam said. "I've got my priorities straight, now. This is what matters."

There was nothing anybody could say after that. Dean finished his coffee and then went to lie down for a nap. He didn't dream.

When he woke up, it was dark outside, and darker inside the room. He stubbed his toe on Sam's bed on the way out the door. The house was quiet and unlit. Dean pulled on his coat and went outside, down the steps and through the late snow into the barren woods on the edge of Bobby's land. He could see a light in the distance, a porch light from a neighbor's house, and he could hear an owl hooting somewhere; but other than that the world was empty, just Dean with his coat and his aching lungs and his brother who—his brother—

Dean crouched down, there in the snow, his head in his hands, and wept for Sam, who he loved but no longer knew.

He went back inside after a while. Bobby was sitting at the kitchen table, hat off, staring at a blank spot on the opposite wall.

"Where's Sam," Dean said.

"Asleep," Bobby said. "Sit down."

Dean sat. Princess was under the table, and she whined and butted her face against his shins.

"You can't let him do it," Bobby said.

"I know," Dean said. He coughed, lungs rattling. "We'll leave tomorrow."

"And go where," Bobby said.

"I don't know," Dean said. "Away. Fuck, maybe if I can distract him, get his mind off everything..."

"Well. Maybe," Bobby said. "You'll be careful, right?"

"When the fuck am I not," Dean said. He propped his elbows on the table and leaned his forehead against his closed fists. "Fuck, Bobby. I just. _Fuck_."

"Yep," Bobby said.

Sam was asleep when Dean went back to their room. He shut the door behind him and stood there in the dark. It was raining outside. He dropped his boots onto the floor, and they clattered there, metal and leather bouncing off the wood floorboards. Sam turned onto his side, facing away from Dean. The mattress squeaked. Dean inhaled.


	2. Chapter 2

**3\. I don't care what it takes, I'm going to get you out of this.**

The first week, they made it to Florida, all the way down to the Keys. Dean didn't know why the fuck they were heading there, but he didn't ask. Sam did all the driving; Dean just napped in the back seat and ate slices of raisin bread, the only thing he could keep down lately.

They spent two days staying in a little shack right on the beach. Dean took naps on top of the covers, lulled to sleep by the whirring of the ceiling fan, and when he wasn't sleeping he would go outside and float in the ocean, the sun hot on his forehead. He barely saw Sam, didn't know what Sam was up to; didn't really care.

Sam, it turned out, was hunting some sort of sea monster. He showed up on the evening of the second day, carrying a white plastic bucket with a lid on top. The bucket wasn't fully opaque, and Dean could see something swimming around inside of it, dark and swift.

"The hell are you doing," Dean said. "Thought you quit collecting tadpoles in the fourth grade."

"It's not a tadpole," Sam said, rolling his eyes. He set the bucket on the table and pried off the lid. "Come look."

Dean did, peering warily over the lip of the bucket. There was something in there, all right—sleek and dark green, slimy-looking in the light from the bare bulb screwed into the ceiling. Its lips drew back and it hissed at Dean, teeth round and yellow.

"That's disgusting," Dean said.

"It's a mermaid," Sam said.

Dean snorted. "Mermaids aren't _real_ , Sam. Plus they're supposed to be hot."

"They're real," Sam said. "And apparently not as sexy as Ariel."

"You like Disney movies too much, it's a little scary," Dean said. "Why'd you catch this thing, anyway?"

"It's going to tell us where the Garden is," Sam said.

"Uh-huh," Dean said. He crossed his arms.

Sam kicked at one of the folding chairs until the locking mechanism caught, and he sat down, eye-level with the bucket. The mermaid thing clawed at the rim and hauled itself up, blinking at Sam with its big, wet eyes.

"Tell me where the Garden is," Sam said.

The mermaid licked its teeth. "No," it said. Its voice sounded weird—like there was an echo to it.

"Then you can stay in that bucket," Sam said.

"No bucket," the mermaid said. It looked around the room, head bobbing.

"There's nowhere else to go," Sam said. "If you tell me, I'll put you back in the ocean."

"Want the ocean," the mermaid said.

Dean rolled his eyes and wandered off to find his raisin bread. He wasn't really interested in watching Sam have a battle of wills with a demented sea creature.

He went for a swim, and when he got back, Sam was watching TV. The bucket was still on the table. Dean could see the top of the mermaid's head, and its eyes.

"Wouldn't talk, huh," he said. His head was spinning. He flopped down on the bed and closed his eyes, feeling the mattress tilt underneath him a few times before everything settled down. Maybe he got water in his ear or something. Or maybe he was just dying.

"Not yet," Sam said.

"How's that thing gonna know where the golden apples are, anyway," Dean said.

"Collective memory," Sam said. "These things know everything that's ever been heard or seen by any mermaid anywhere in the world for the last couple million years."

"Yeah, except the Garden's on the _land_ ," Dean said.

"They get around," Sam said. "You'd be surprised."

"Dude, this is crazy," Dean said. "You do realize that, right?"

"It's not," Sam said. "The mermaid's going to tell me, and then we'll go to the Garden. I told you I was going to save you, and I will."

"Maybe I shouldn't be saved," Dean said. "Maybe I don't want you to."

"Notice how you're saying _maybe_ ," Sam said.

Dean didn't have a response to that. He squeezed his eyes shut tighter and watched strange, geometric shapes form and spin in the darkness.

"Please," Sam said. "Dean. _Please_."

Dean rolled over onto his belly and buried his face in the pillow. Sam didn't speak again.

In the morning, Dean woke up to the sound of the shower running. The mermaid was still in the bucket, peering sullenly at Dean, its little claws catching at the handle. Dean rubbed his hands over his face. Sam took the longest showers known to man, so he had at least ten minutes, maybe more.

"Did you tell him anything?" he asked the mermaid.

"Not speak," the mermaid said. "Not to you neither. Dead thing."

"Oh, for Christ's sake," Dean said. "I'm not dead yet."

"Will be," the mermaid said, and grinned.

"I swear to God," Dean muttered. "That is really freakin' creepy. All right, I'm gonna take you back now, but I gotta put the lid on the bucket."

"Back to water?" the mermaid asked.

"Yep," Dean said. "Hold tight."

It was early enough that there were only a few people on the beach, old ladies wearing Bermuda shorts and sifting through the sand for shells. Dean hustled to the water as fast as he could and waded in up to his knees. Then he pulled the lid off the bucket and let the mermaid go. It streaked away through the water, faster than any fish Dean had ever seen. He wondered how the Christ Sam had caught the thing in the first place.

He went back. Sam was out of the shower, dressed and sitting on his bed. He stood up when Dean closed the door; he was frowning, and Dean drew in air, bracing himself.

"Where's the mermaid," Sam said. His hands dangled at his sides, loose.

"I let it go," Dean said.

"Why did you—why would you do that, Dean. I had—it was going to tell us where to look," Sam said. His voice shook, and he turned away, raising one hand to press at his temple.

"You can't do this, Sam," Dean said. He set the bucket down on the table. Water spread out across the formica.

"I can," Sam said. "I have to. I—Dean—"

"No," Dean said. "I shouldn't even be alive right now. I can't keep cheatin' death forever. We've pulled it off twice, but maybe the third time..."

" _No_ ," Sam said. He turned around. His face was wet, his nostrils flared. "Third time's the _charm_. You'll live—you'll live through it, I won't let her—"

"This isn't the only way, Sammy," Dean said. His chest hurt, tight and scratchy. "Fuckin' admit it. There are other ways you could save me but you're hell-bent on this immortality business, for whatever reason—"

"I don't want you to die," Sam said. "Okay? Not ever. I don't want you to leave me. Even if I get you out of this deal, you're going to die some time, and even if it's fifty years from now, I don't—it would kill me, Dean. I can't—I can't."

"Christ," Dean said. The ache in his lungs crawled out of him in a harsh cough. He bent over, hands braced on his knees, and coughed until he was out of air. He felt his blood pounding inside him like the bass line to a favorite song: relentless and rising.

"Hey," Sam said, and his hands were on Dean's back, pulling him upright. The angle changed something, and air flowed into Dean's lungs again, clean and sweet. He slumped against Sam, relieved. "You're okay," Sam said.

"Yeah," Dean said. He rubbed at his sternum.

"Hey," Sam said again. His hands cupped Dean's elbows. He kissed Dean's forehead, the corner of his eye. They were kisses like the ones Dean remembered pressing to his mother's face when he was really little and she was all that he knew in the whole world—kisses about comfort and safety and the warm scent of her skin. Something in him crumpled, realizing that he was all those things to Sam: brother and parent and everything that Sam had ever known.

"I love you," Sam said. "You're my brother. I'm not going to let you die."

"Okay," Dean said.

"Let me do it," Sam said. "It's going to be wonderful, Dean, just you and me forever. We'll have all the time in the world. Say you'll let me."

"Sam," Dean said.

"Please," Sam said, his earnest face streaked with drying tears.

"Okay," Dean heard himself saying, knowing even as he said it that he would regret it for the rest of his life, however fucking long it would be. "Okay, okay. You can."

That night, Sam caught another mermaid, and Dean didn't stop him. They were on the road two days later.

***

It turned out that the Garden of the Hesperides wasn't in Libya or on some random-ass island out at sea—it was in Idaho, not far from Coeur d'Alene. Sam pulled off the interstate onto a state highway, and from there onto a back country road with no name, and then onto a one-lane gravel road that had Dean gritting his teeth thinking about what it was doing to the undercarriage of his car. There was still snow along the edges of the highway, but it got warmer the higher they climbed, buds appearing on the few deciduous trees, and then unfurling leaves, green and translucent, the sky clear, sun beating down on the roof of the car.

"This is really fucking freaky," Dean said. "It's _March_."

"Yeah, pretty weird," Sam said, but he was grinning.

They drove as far as they could, and then parked and walked, following a deer trail through the woods. It was steep, and Dean had to stop every few hundred feet and suck in harsh gulps of air, Sam's worried hands plucking at his shirt.

"Stop it, I'm fine," Dean said, batting Sam away. "Just outta shape, I guess."

"Sure," Sam said. His hand slid up to rest between Dean's shoulder blades, providing support and forward motion.

Dean was sweating within ten minutes, and he stopped to strip off his flannel. There were birds chirping in the trees overhead. They came into a meadow, bright red poppies dotted here and there amid the waist-high grass, and all of it made the hair stand up on the back of Dean's neck. None of it was fucking normal. He wanted to go back to the car, drive back down into winter, and pretend that none of this was happening.

"I think we're almost there," Sam said.

"Fuck," Dean said. "Okay. Okay."

The Garden was at the top of the hill, impossible to miss: the long, grassy climb broken by a ring of trees. The sun was directly overhead.

"What kind of fucking trees are those," Dean said, lifting the hem of his shirt to wipe at his forehead.

"Apple trees," Sam said. "They're apples."

As they got closer, Dean could see the tangled tree limbs, the heavy fruit. They circled around until they found a gap in the trees and then walked in: Sam first, Dean a few steps behind.

"Isn't there supposed to be a dragon?" Dean asked, staring up at the enormous, twisted apple trees, their branches so thickly entwined that only the barest hint of sunlight could filter through.

Sam shrugged. "Maybe there isn't one. The ancient Greeks were pretty bloody-minded, maybe they just made it up."

"Fuckin' mythology bullshit," Dean muttered. The ground was dappled, latticed with sunlight and shadow, and covered with thick green grass. Dean's feet made hardly any noise as he followed Sam deeper in the Garden.

It was quiet in there: no birdsong, no wind through the leaves. The only apples Dean could see were red—a crimson shade he'd never seen in the grocery store, but not the right color, not the one that would do him any good. Sam seemed to know where he was going, though, making a beeline due north-northwest, and before long, Dean saw it: a soft glow ahead of them, like light from a lamp.

"That's it," Sam said.

Dean's stomach cramped sharply. He put his flannel back on and tugged the sleeves down over his knuckles. He was cold, suddenly. Maybe there was a wind after all.

The tree stood by itself, a good ten feet from the other trees, and the whole goddamn thing was covered with golden apples, each of them shining. Dean watched as Sam picked one, the light turning his hand red, glowing through his blood. Sam wiped the apple on his shirt and brought it to his mouth.

"Sammy," Dean said, voice cracking.

"It's okay," Sam said. "It's—Dean, it's okay now. Everything's going to be fine." He put his free hand on Dean's shoulder and took a bite of the apple. His eyes closed. He smiled.

"How, um. How is it," Dean said, his pulse fluttering rabbit-fast in his throat.

"It's delicious," Sam said, still chewing. "Have a bite."

Dean took the apple from Sam's hand and watched, brow furrowed, as Sam chewed. The skin of the apple was smooth and warm to the touch. Dean turned it, examining the ridges Sam's teeth had left in the golden skin.

"Come on," Sam said. "It's really good."

Dean sunk his teeth in. The flesh was crisp, but it was bitter in his mouth, not sweet.

Sam was chewing happily, his face turned up toward the filtered light. "We can go anywhere," he said. "The Greek isles. Mozambique."

"Okay," Dean said.

"Isn't that a great apple?" Sam said.

"Yeah," Dean said, and licked the sour juice from the corner of his mouth. "I've never tasted anything better." He took another bite.


End file.
